The Ballad of Mender McClure | General Electric Theater (1956)

Ronald Reagan introduces episode 16 of this fourth season General Electric Theater anthology series, which originally aired on CBS TV on 15 January 1956.

A lazy, self-centered man (Thomas Mitchell) could care less about others, including his wife (Gail Bonney) and 10 children. A mysterious stranger (Vincent Price) then gives him the magical ability to cure the ill, disrupting his way of thinking…

General Electric Theater was a hugely successful anthology series hosted by Ronald Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television, notching up 302 episodes.

The TV version of the show, produced by MCA-TV/Revue, was broadcast every Sunday evening 9pm, beginning 1 February 1953, and ending 27 May 1962, when host Reagan (who was also part owner of the programme) was fired on the orders of then Attorney General of the United States Robert F Kennedy over his reference to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) as one of the problems of ‘big government’.

And it was his reiteration of his points in his famous 1964 televised speech for Republican presidential nominee Barry M Goldwater that paved the way or his election as governor of California in 1966.

Vincent Price appeared in two further editions of the TV-version of the show, The Iron Horse with Sterling Hayden and Fay Wray in 1957 and Angel in the Air with Gina Gillespie in 1958.